Over the last 12 depositions we've received as scans, where do we lose the most time converting to accurate, searchabl…
Ensure you have Adobe Acrobat Pro and an automation platform (such as Power Automate or Zapier) with access to your desired document storage (e.g., OneDrive, SharePoint, Dropbox).
CautionOCR automation requires an Acrobat Pro subscription and may require additional connectors or permissions in your automation platform.
In your automation platform, create a new workflow and set a trigger event (such as 'New file in folder' or 'File uploaded').
Add an action to your workflow that uses the official Adobe Acrobat connector (e.g., 'Recognize text using OCR' in Power Automate) to process the incoming PDF file.
NoteThe Adobe Acrobat connector supports OCR as an action in Power Automate and similar platforms.
Configure the OCR action by specifying the input file location and any desired language or output options.
Best practiceFor best OCR accuracy, ensure scanned PDFs are at least 300 dpi and free of skew or heavy annotations.
Add subsequent actions to your workflow as needed (such as saving the OCR'd PDF to a different folder, sending a notification, or extracting text).
Test the workflow with a sample scanned PDF to confirm that OCR is triggered and the output meets your requirements.
Best practiceSome users automate pre-processing steps (like deskewing or downsampling) before OCR for better results.
You can monitor the status of automated OCR jobs from your automation platform’s run history or logs.
Adobe Acrobat’s Power Automate connector provides the 'Recognize text using OCR' action for automated workflows; there is no public standalone OCR API from Adobe.
Recognizing text in a scanned PDF uses OCR to convert image-based text into actual text. This is important because it allows you to search for words, copy text, and interact with the content as if it were a digital document. Without text recognition, a scanned PDF is just a picture, and you cannot select or search its words.
This message means the page already has real text, not just an image of text. Acrobat's text recognition feature is designed for image-only pages. If you get this error, it means the text is likely already selectable and searchable. You do not need to run OCR on that specific page. Check if you can select text on the page; if so, the text recognition is not needed.
Scanning documents at 300 dpi (dots per inch) is recommended because it provides a good balance of image quality and file size. A higher resolution like 300 dpi captures more detail, which significantly improves the accuracy of the OCR process. This means Acrobat is more likely to correctly identify letters and words, leading to fewer errors in the recognized text.
| Feature | Scanned PDF (before OCR) | Native Digital PDF |
|---|---|---|
| Text Selectable/Searchable | No (it's an image) | Yes |
| Created From | Paper document scan | Digital software (e.g., Word, InDesign) |
| File Content | Image of text | Actual text characters |
| Editing Capability | Limited (image editing) | Easier (text editing) |